Ho Kwon Ping is the co-founder and executive chairman of Banyan Group.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Growing up, Ho Kwon Ping didn’t think he’d grow to be a businessman, let alone a hotel tycoon.
“I had not at all times desired to be an entrepreneur,” he told CNBC Make It. “It’s just that the few times where I began working for other people, it didn’t really work … I’m quite individualistic. I became an entrepreneur more by the shortage of other avenues.”
Today, the 72-year-old is the founder and executive chairman of Banyan Group, a hospitality company with a portfolio of 12 global brands, greater than 80 hotels and resorts, together with spas, galleries and residences spread across greater than 20 countries.
A view of the sunset from the Mandai Rainforest Resort by Banyan Tree.
Courtesy of Banyan Group.
The corporate, which is listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange, brought in about $328 million Singapore dollars (about $242 million) in revenue in 2023. Banyan Group has a market capitalization of SG$300 million, in line with LSEG data.
The childhood
Ho shared something about himself that some may find surprising: He was jailed in his youth.
He said his formative years was largely defined by a robust zeal for social activism.
While working toward his undergraduate degree at Stanford University within the early Seventies, he was an outspoken student activist against the Vietnam War (also called the “American War” in Vietnam).
He joined other protests on campus — notably, one against American inventor and physicist William Shockley, which ultimately got him suspended from the institution.
“I used to be thrown out due to my attending with the Black Students Union, a protest they’d against a man called William Shockley, who won the Nobel Prize for creating semiconductors, but who also had a wierd view about eugenics. He wrote several books saying that Blacks must be sterilized,” said Ho.
Consequently, Ho was tried in a campus judicial panel and located guilty of suppressing academic freedom, thus resulting in his suspension from the university. Subsequently, he decided to go away Stanford and returned to Singapore, where he accomplished his national service and restarted his university studies.
“I had to start out from zero and it was really boring, so I began writing as a contract journalist [for] a now-defunct magazine called Far Eastern Economic Review,” he said. “I began writing about Singapore politics, which the federal government didn’t like. So, I got jailed under the Internal Security Act for being pro-Communist.”
That was in 1977, and he was put into solitary confinement during his two-month prison sentence — a time he describes as being “scary, lonely, depressing and reflective.”
Ho Kwon Ping and his wife, Claire Chiang, in 1992.
Courtesy of Banyan Group.
After his release, Ho rejoined the magazine as a journalist and moved to Hong Kong together with his wife, Claire Chiang. The newlyweds moved to a small fishing village on Lamma Island there called Yung Shue Wan, which translates to “Banyan Tree Bay.”
“I wasn’t paid thoroughly, so I could not afford to live to tell the tale Hong Kong Island or Kowloon … so we had no selection but to live to tell the tale Lamma Island,” Ho said. “Although we weren’t wealthy … we had three very idyllic years there.”
Ho was born in Hong Kong and spent most of his childhood and adolescence growing up in Thailand before moving to Singapore. His father, Ho Rih Hwa, was a businessman who co-founded the Thai Wah Public Company and headed the Wah Chang Group, conglomerates with operations across Asia.
“Although my parents were pretty much off, I’ve at all times been a bit rebellious and desired to be independent and so forth,” he said.
An accidental businessman
In 1981, Ho’s father had a stroke. Because the eldest son, Ho assumed the responsibility of taking on the family business.
“That business was an actual microcosm of overseas Chinese businesses, meaning a jack of all trades but master of none,” said Ho. “We had about 10 to 12 different businesses from construction to contract manufacturing of televisions … even Adidas shoes, and so forth.”
After several major failures and lessons in running the family business, Ho had an epiphany — quite than running a “hodgepodge of companies,” he desired to concentrate on constructing his own brand.
“I made a decision then that contract manufacturing is just not a long-term solution. You’ve gotten to own the client, and you might only accomplish that by owning a brand or owning a technology, and I’m not a technologist, so I made a decision we needed to own a brand,” he said.
When the ‘lightbulb went off’
The celebrities aligned when someday in 1984, Ho stumbled upon an unlimited piece of coastal land in Bang Tao Bay in Phuket, Thailand. He decided to buy the stretch of over 550 acres, which turned out to be an abandoned tin mine, in line with an official company statement.
After years of restoration, Ho worked alongside his wife and his brother — who’s an architect — to design and develop several hotels and resorts on the property. Laguna Phuket, Asia’s first destination integrated resort, was opened in 1987, in line with the statement.
“We designed the primary hotel, and we managed to get a Thai company to administer it. A second hotel — Sheraton managed it, and third and fourth and so forth,” said Ho. “After which the last piece of land had no beach [so] no one wanted to administer it.”
“That was when the lightbulb went off, and I said: Well, since no one wants to administer it … why don’t we start our own brand?”
An aerial view of Banyan Tree in Phuket, Thailand.
Courtesy of Banyan Group.
To make up for the shortage of a beach, Ho decided to construct private villas with a pool for every.
“This was 30 years ago, so the notion of an ‘all-pool villa’ hotel didn’t exist … we have also pioneered the ‘tropical spa,'” he said.
In 1994, the group’s flagship luxury resort “Banyan Tree Phuket” opened its doors, including the primary Banyan Tree Spa — a reputation inspired by the blissful years Ho spent together with his wife in Hong Kong’s Banyan Tree Bay.
“Innovation doesn’t drop from the sky … it was a response to a necessity,” he said.
In 2006, Banyan Tree Holdings Limited debuted on the Singapore Stock Exchange, and in 2024, Banyan Group was launched as an umbrella brand for the multi-branded portfolio, in line with an organization statement.
“People have asked me whether I sold out or not, and I might say: ‘No, I’ve grown up. The sorts of things I used to be doing, you’ll be able to’t keep doing ceaselessly. You will go to jail permanently, and likewise you are not effective,'” said Ho. “But what we desired to do when it comes to social change, I believe we’re actually doing through Banyan Tree.”
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